1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mobile device supporting multiple operating systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to a mobile device providing a hardware device shared between two operating systems and a sharing method thereof.
2. Description of Related Art
Common mobile devices are generally divided into notebook personal computers and personal digital assistants (PDA). The notebook personal computers adopting x86 architecture and non-embedded operating systems have stronger computation ability and higher power consumption. The PDAs adopting embedded architecture and embedded operating systems have lower computation ability and less power consumption. Therefore, it has become a mainstream product design to integrate a notebook computer and a PDA into one mobile device, so as to combine the advantages of the two to improve the overall performance.
In the above mobile device, two central processing units (CPU) are installed for running two operating systems at the same time. One of the CPUs is used to run the non-embedded operating system (e.g. Microsoft Windows Vista®), and the other CPU is used to run the embedded operating system (e.g. Microsoft Windows Mobile®). The two operating systems can be run at the same time. Thus, a user can perform simple works, for example, schedule arrangement, contactor management, E-mail handling, and so on under the embedded operating system, so as to reduce power consumption. The user can also switch the mobile device to run the non-embedded operating system so as to perform word processing, audio-visual editing, and other resource-consuming works.
However, how to share peripheral devices, e.g. keyboard, touchpad and liquid crystal display (LCD), between two operating systems in a mobile device is still an important issue. Generally speaking, a logic design for efficiently controlling and managing the peripheral devices between the two operating systems is needed for the mobile device. Otherwise, the mobile device would need two sets of independent peripheral devices to satisfy the requirements of the two operating systems, which would increase the cost, size, weight, and energy consumption of the mobile device, contrary to the modern trend of smaller size, lower weight, and energy conservation.